In my ignorant opinion, saying that you speak for god can lead some people skipping down the road towards a full blown god-complex, no doubt those people would be the same scumbags even if they were secular but, I feel that some people can used twisted logic to tell themselves that their imaginary friend really wants them to commit that immoral action, perhaps being the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I am proud that the Army is fully cooperating with local authorities on this case, as it does with the grand majority of sexual crimes. It’s great that we caught this event before it destroyed the lives of two innocents and hopefully no other child has been harmed by Sgt. McGeoch.

Also, and completely unrelated to child rape, as I was catching up on my reading on Rock Beyond Belief, and because FTB is not accessible on army-net, I was disheartened to learn that one of my fellow FreeThoughtBlog-ians(??) that had been initially scheduled to speak, BlagHag, won’t be able to attend (QQ). I have scheduled my leave in hopes of being able to attend the event and had hoped to meet yet another of my fellow bloggers in the world of 3D-land. But since RBB has been rescheduled so many times during it’s “rocky” gestation, she had a schedule conflict with another conference. I guess I will just have to settle with listening to Ed, Al, and the rest of team godless. I’ll see you all there if the leave fairy decides to grace me with a plane ticket, I’ll be the ridiculously tall dude with the pink mohawk.

(By the way Andrew, I know you read this blog and if I am able to go I will be crashing at your place since you live on post, thanks in advance).

CNN Reports that the high school class of 2011’s SAT scores were some of the lowest on record. The reading scores are the lowest on record and the combined reading and math scores are at their lowest point since 1995.

Public education in America has devolved into a two track system; the top 10% get a decent education through magnet and honors classes while the rest are stuck with crappy teachers in a glorified babysitting program.

Our lower education system is completely broken and it bodes poorly for the future of the nation. More and more technical majors in American universities are becoming dominated by foreign students, if we don’t fix this imbalance soon (through more Americans, not by kicking out the exchange students), then eventually even our higher learning centers will decline as other nations’ schools outpace even our currently excellent(ish) public universities and leave America in the dust once and for all. Can we really expect to keep our technological dominance when we eventually are only left with strip mall colleges? Can even the next Silicon Valley protégé emerge when she or he does not receive the mathematics education that is required during their formative years?

Just another reminder for me to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese before too long.

BAGHDAD – Gunmen using silenced weapons killed a Foreign Ministry employee in Baghdad’s western district of Jamiaa, an Interior Ministry source said.

FALLUJA – Gunmen attacked four houses belonging to former members of a government-backed Sunni militia, killing a man and wounding three other people, on the southwestern outskirts of Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.

Quote of the day:

After a rocket was launched from outside one side of the base, flew completely over, and wacked some sheep on the far side, “I like these insurgents, can we keep them?”

The investigation of News Corp. for it’s alleged illegal business practices including (but of course not limited too) hacking, unfair business practices, and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has deepened as the DOJ has begun a probe to see if there is a larger pattern of corruption present. My spidy sense says yes, but I am WAYYYYY too biased to make that judgment objectively.

The DOJ has reached out to whistleblower Robert Emmel and is now sifting through the paperwork from News Corp’s anti-competitive lawsuits, to the tune of $700 million greenbacks paid out by the company in settlements. What forest laid down it’s life for that mountain of paperwork?

Missed this one when I was moving about Iraq, but it still deserves a mention.

It should come as no surprise that the individuals who abide by fundamentalist Christian and radical Islamic doctrines would be the first to cry out that they are being persecuted when their dangerous, damaging and disingenuous beliefs come under attack. Most of these people lack the maturity and intelligence to act in a socially acceptable manner. Many of them are sociopaths and quite a good number of them are psychopaths. All of them are clearly delusional. – Al Stefanelli

Boy o Boy, you were right, Al. In response to Al Stefanelli’s “explosive” blog post, The Blaze went full steam ahead on the batshit-mobile. Their article is so disingenuous that it made me almost swallow my chuck of skoal in disbelief. The same website that was so careful to later parse the booing of Steven Hill in my last post showed no such distinction when it came to distorting Al’s words. Even the byline was a piece of work “they want us to die”, trying to stir up hate against atheists when the line was taken from Mr. Stefanelli’s blog who used it to express the sentiments of fundamentalists. Such a dishonest tactic almost gives me a feeling of respect for The Blaze, it is such a pure unfiltered piece of work that I have to begrudgingly appreciate the hate filled balls on the author, Billy Hallowell.

Mr. Hallowell’s article is exactly the reaction expected as laid out by Mr. Stefanelli. First, The Blaze does everything it can to distance itself from Islam.

In the post, Al Stefanelli, American Atheists’ Georgia State Director, makes a bizarre connection between radical Muslims and Christians. In speaking about “fundamentalist Christian and radical Islamic doctrines,“ Stefanelli says that both are ”dangerous, damaging and disingenuous.” Throughout the blog post, he continues to create ties between these two groups, but declines to truly define them.

…

Certainly some would agree that Islamic extremists (and perhaps fringe Christian believers) are sociopaths or psychopaths, but Stefanelli’s comments are so vague it’s impossible to discern who the targets of his rage truly are. Without a clear definition of who, exactly, he’s referring to, one’s mind runs wild with wonderment. – Billy Hallowell, The Blaze.

Truly define? If you are an outside observer of both social groups it is easy. Both push similar tenants in support of different flavors of Yahweh, the only difference is that most fundamentalist Christians are ensconced in a society that limits the vast majority of their hate filled ideas from being implemented via violence in the real world by secular law and order and a society of tolerance while most radical Islamists are not.

Mr. Hallowell hides behind that fact, but Mr. Stefanelli was not linking the problem of fundamentalist Christians to violence but, merely points out that actions that would get you arrested for doing (i.e. blatant hate speech) becomes socially acceptable if you add the words “God said so”, you magically are now blameless through the passive acceptance of religious moderates. [Read more…]

I hate “We Support our Troops” car ribbons. Really pal, that $1.05 magnet somehow makes you a part of the team? The sticker by its self is empty without action, merely a chance to get a cop to maybe let you get out of that speeding ticket. It is completely different than my experiences in airports or shopping off base in uniform where some nice people came up and shook my hand, offered kind words, or even better, bought me a beer. But the sticker is just like the American flag pin that has become a required uniform item for politicians, just a meaningless symbol of in group loyalty. Politicians are already supporting America (in theory) by becoming public servants and if you really want to support our troops try giving one of the many unemployed PTSD affected former Soldiers a job, even if it is just cutting your grass. Try helping out at a veteran’s function, there are ways to help aplenty.

Why do some people only support the actions of our troops when they commit intrinsic action and sanctioned homicide? Yet when those same Soldiers attempt to freely live their personal lives, a large chunk of society rejects them. Just saying “we support the troops” does not cut it, as a paper thin commitment is just that, paper thin.

SANTORUM: The fact that they’re making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we’re going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege and removing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I think tries to inject social policy into the military and the military’s job is to do one thing — and that is to defend our country. We need to give the military, which is all volunteer, the ability to do so…and I believe this undermines that ability.

KELLY: So what would you do with soldiers like Steven Hill? Now he’s out…so what would you do as president?

SANTORUM: Look, what we’re doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now and that’s tragic. I would just say that going forward, we would reinstitute that policy if Rick Santorum was president. Period. That policy would be reinstituted and as far as people in, I would not throw them out because that would be unfair to them because of the policy of this administration, but we would move forward in conformity to what was happening in the past, which is — sex is not an issue. It should not be an issue. Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself — whether you’re heterosexual or homosexual.

He also stated that “any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military,” which is bullshit. Soldiers fuck. There are rules on who you can fuck (no officer on enlisted action, no banging people in your chain of command) or where you can fuck (no cohabitation if not married) but Soldiers defiantly fuck. It is fucking boring over here, so some people choose to pass the time doing the horizontal tango. In my row of CHUs (army for the trailers in which we live), there are several married couples who live together and grace us with an audio blow by blow every few nights (the walls are thin). Even in pervious wars, camp followers (whores) were abound. In WWII it was that nice European farm girl, in Korea the female camp followers would share sleeping bags with Soldiers, and in Vietnam it was “me love you, long time”. If there is a fight happening on planet Earth, sex usually follows. So that line is a bunch of bull. Being gay does not entitle someone to a special privilege in this love fest; it merely gives gay Soldiers the ability to get it on without have to post a lookout for bigots.

I love Conservapedia, when the Lenski Dialogs happened I stumbled on the congealed hatred of a website through the blow by blow coverage on New Scientist. Through it, I found the insanity of the website’s content and it’s moderators, the humorous and insightful coverage of RationalWiki (on army computers Conservapedia is readily accessible and RationalWiki is blocked, fuckers), and had the thankfully deceased TK (an infamous slimeball of a moderator) threaten my RL career repeatedly.

One of Andy Schlafly’s biggest hang-ups is the Theory of Relativity due to his linkage of the scientific concept with Moral Relativity, which he abhors. In his mind, because Moral Relativity is evil, the scientific theory must be a liberal lie perpetuated on society in order to bring about socialism (he really does think that). Just look at his long list of counter examples to the theory or his wiki’s statement that all current examples of the theory in use are lies while using software that relies on relativistic principles to coordinate real time posting and location updates.

Some liberal politicians have extrapolated the theory of relativity to metaphorically justify their own political agendas. For example, Democratic President Barack Obama helped publish an article by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe to apply the relativistic concept of “curvature of space” to promote a broad legal right to abortion.[61] As of June 2008, over 170 law review articles have cited this liberal application of the theory of relativity to legal arguments.[62] Applications of the theory of relativity to change morality have also been common.[63] Moreover, there is an unmistakable effort to censor or ostracize criticism of relativity.[64]

Physicist Robert Dicke of Princeton University was a prominent critic[65] of general relativity, and Dicke’s alternative “has enjoyed a renaissance in connection with theories of higher dimensional space-time.”[66] Despite being one of the most accomplished physicists in the 20th century, Dicke was repeatedly passed over for a Nobel Prize, and in at least one case Dicke was insulted by the award being granted to others for contributions more properly credited to Dicke.

There has been little recognition by the Nobel Prize committee of either theory of relativity, and particularly scant recognition of the Theory of General Relativity.

Everyone in the U.S. gets the meme that “America’s military is without peer and that it’s Soldiers are the best in the world” smashed into their skulls with a pipe wrench. And yes, we could kick the ass of any other country today in a stand up high intensity conflict or whip any insurgent in unconventional warfare when our hands are politically untied (not likely anymore with globalised media) but, there is a plague in the military and thy name is poor leadership.

Our Officer and Non-Commissioned Officer corps have suffered greatly over the past decade of conflict. After Vietnam, the army took a good hard look on how it had squandered the necessary political capital to sustain the fight and made several adjustments. Gone was the draft and in its place is the American warrior caste, your modern all volunteer force. For a while it worked without damaging our combat or political power, the military became a family calling for most and the tragedy of combat losses were restricted to a small subset of American culture. That is until you factored in PTSD. With rising rates of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the military has seen an exodus of its NCOs and young officers and has tried to staunch the flow with increased recruiting and stop-loss.

That exodus has created a situation where people who should not lead get promoted just to fill the slot because there is simply no one left to do that job. Becoming an E-5 used to be a major event in an enlisted Soldier’s life, a mark of respect and responsibility, now they are handing the rank of sergeant out like candy.

Likewise in my branch basic school, the standard to pass the class and get the opportunity to command a platoon was based on proving to a seasoned staff sergeant that you were capable of accomplishing a combat mission with no sleep, little time, and extreme stress. That still occurred but I was shocked upon graduation to see fellow LTs who had failed their “gauntlet” mission (and the retest) standing beside me at graduation. I was so shocked that I went to my tester, Staff Sergeant Snider (An absolutely amazing NCO) and asked why the Schols-a-raptor had failed to get recycled or terminated. I even had to repeat a portion of the class when I failed to take into account how the frozen ground would limit my tank’s ability to establish a cordon on the objective (who knew that tanks slide on ice, zombie-christ-on-a-stick I’m from Texas). He looked at me apologetically and said that there was a quota in place and they couldn’t afford to fire him.

The more I read about President Obama’s new deficit reduction plan, the more I like it. It’s not the plan I would want in a ‘perfect world’ but, perfect worlds don’t exist outside of Azeroth, and even there Chinese gold farmers wreck havoc on inflation. I mean have you seen the price of gold these days? It’s enough to make a gnome cry.

FOX, likewise, thinks the plan is not perfect…how imperfect you ask? Just imperfect enough end America and usher in the rise of Stalin-Hitler-Mohammed as grand poobah of America. Faced with having to tell the world how evil Obama’s plan is and lacking any actual evidence by informed sources to do so, they have pulled out the tactic of quote mining with gusto.

Specifically, FOX blatantly twisted the words of President Clinton to say that he was against the “Buffet Rule”, Warren Buffet’s common sense idea that the rich should return to paying their fair share of taxes as the inequality of wealth in America is now on par only with third world nations.

Like always, Media Matters has the play by play.

From Fox and Friends,

BRIAN KILMEADE (co-host): Meanwhile, Bill Clinton was weighing in, because he’s got his Clinton Initiative here in New York. … Bill Clinton, of course, in the middle of the news, and of course it seems like every time the initiative takes place for him, there’s some major news story. He was asked about the Buffet Rule that the president announced on Monday — would it be effective to take billionaires and blame them for what’s going on? Let’s listen to what he had to stay.

CLINTON : Whatever you think about this millionaire surcharge, I don’t really care, because I would pay it, but it won’t affect me because I already pay the minimum income because I live in New York. […] But, you know, it’s OK with me. I’ll pay more. But it won’t solve the problem.

CARLSON: That’s amazing, actually. I don’t know if that’s gotten enough press. Bill Clinton saying that he doesn’t know if it would solve the problem, and in fact he went on to say that he found President Obama’s approach to the deficit, quote, “a little confusing.” Why hasn’t that gotten more press? I mean, Bill Clinton, a moderate Democrat from Arkansas — he would probably be doing this situation that we find ourselves in right now differently than President Obama. That, I find, very fascinating, and I find it even more fascinating that it hasn’t gotten more press.

KILMEADE: How about this? He says he personally doesn’t think that we should be raising taxes or cutting spending until we get this economy off the ground.

President Clinton said nothing to that effect and if the full quote was played, it would have been readily apparent but, since when has FOX cared about truth over rhetoric.

Yet, in other interviews given that very day, President Clinton went on to reiterate his personal core belief that nothing too radical should be done until we get out of our current economic slump and then express his support for the “Buffet Rule” and President Obama’s decision to delay tax increases until 2013.

From Media Matters:

Moreover, in other interviews Clinton gave at the meeting, Clinton makes it clear that he does support the Buffett Rule, even if it won’t eliminate the deficit all on its own. In an interview with Fortune editor Andy Serwer, Clinton first reiterates that he doesn’t think spending should be cut or taxes raised “until we get growth going,” but he adds that he doesn’t think Obama’s plan does so. Indeed, as The New York Timesnoted, Obama’s plan does not call for tax increases until 2013. From the Fortune interview:

CLINTON: Let’s make a distinction. Whatever is or is not going to be the law, the proposal the president made is the proposal that would not kick in until the economy has growth well under way. And I don’t think either Republican proposals to cut spending a lot or Democratic proposals to raise taxes, or to do both — I don’t think either — it’s wise to do any of that until we get growth going. I don’t we should do anything. And I don’t believe the president did.